“Imagine that all of your friends and family are on a rushing train. Now imagine that this train will inevitably crash because the bridge is out. Everyone that is still on the train when it crashes will die. Let’s pretend your loved ones do not know that they are in danger so if you want them to live you will need to convince them to get off at the next stop.

“In the same way, all of us are rushing inevitably towards death. If anyone dies without being saved, they will go to hell for all of eternity. If you haven’t accepted Christ accept him now. If you know someone who isn’t a Christian be bold and witness to them as soon as possible so that they do not perish. Let me tell you what hell is like… ”

That is a condensed version of the most memorable sermon I have heard in the 16 years I was a Christian. At the time, I was a camp counselor at a Christian camp in southern Pennsylvania and we were listening to the daily sermon. When the speaker begins to vividly describe hell in a low booming voice, many of the kids tense up in fear. To be honest, I was even scared for my unsaved friends!

Put yourself in the train situation: What would you do to get your friends and family off of the train? I came to the conclusion that I would do anything. If I had to beg and plead with them over the phone I would do that. If I had to lie to them saying there was a bomb on board I would do that. I would even go as far as to say that I would hijack the train with a loaded weapon and force everyone off if that is what it would take. My family may not like my methods at the time, but they would thank me later for saving their lives.

Now pretend for you were still a Christian who really believed that your unbelieving friends and family are going to hell if they do not convert. What would you do? I think if you really loved them, the logical conclusion is anything. They may not like your methods at the time, but they will thank you when they get to heaven.

While honesty is important, most people would agree that there are situations where lying is the “right” thing to do. In a recent post titled “Worst Call Ever,” the author reported that she lied to a woman to try to convince her to get out of an abusive marriage. I commend her for it because the woman’s safety was more important than telling the truth.

Now pretend for you were still a Christian who really believed that your unbelieving friends and family are going to hell if they do not convert. What would you do? I think if you really loved them, the logical conclusion is anything. They may not like your methods at the time, but they will thank you when they get to heaven. Some think that protecting their religion is more important than telling the truth. In 2008, exMormonKen Clark wrote an article titled, “Lying for the Lord” where he discussed his experiences lying to protect the Mormon Church. This article can be can read in its entirety on MormonThink.com:

“Sometimes I caught myself revealing less than the whole truth, or embellishing in order to defend the church. I noticed that other members often did the same thing. I gave myself permission to be slightly dishonest because I was defending God's one true church; or so I reasoned.”

In all fairness, the Mormon Church appears to be trying to distance themselves from this idea (Google “Gospel Teachings About Lying” by Elder Dallin H. Oaks) in the same way they have tried to distance themselves from polygamy and racism. However, an honest Mormon cannot deny that “Lying for the Lord” has played a significant role in their faith’s history.

Why stop at lying when someone’s soul is at stake? Using this logic, I think forced conversions could be ironically rationalized as a caring act. Why stop at lying if my religion is the only true religion and humanity’s only hope? Using this logic, the protection of a religion can justify violence and holy wars.

If God is the source of all morality as most Christians assert, then perhaps God has the ability and right to break moral laws in the same way he has the ability and right to break physical laws with miracles. If God can work through his chosen people to perform miracles, perhaps he can also work through them to break moral laws. Anyone familiar with the Old Testament knows that God sometimes commanded the Israelites to kill. If God commanded humans to kill then, why wouldn’t he command humans to kill now? The sad reality is some still answer the call to kill in God’s name.

Granted, some believers assert that lying and violence are never OK and some religious ideas encourage individuals to do nice things. However, the chilling reality is that some religious ideas encourage well-meaning people to do heinous things. While I disagreed with his sermon, I think the fire-and-brimstone speaker was a nice guy after being around him at camp. I think he genuinely believed that “putting the fear of God” in these kids was the right thing to do. “If eliciting psychological pain is what it takes to save kids from eternal damnation so be it.” In his mind, the ends justified the means.

One of the biggest dangers to a person's mental well-being and health is getting the wrong diagnoses. I have seen some true "miracles" of positive change happen to persons who were diagnosed and then treated properly with therapy and - if needed - medication. I have worked in the substance abuse treatment and mental health fields for several decades now. I am a Masters level clinician and have a good grasp of what particular symptoms and behaviors could mean, and what needs to be done to help a person.

My work as a counselor is "evidence-based". This means that the practices that I use must be based on real research and results and just not some unproven and untested "theory" of human psychology. Such was the case for many years when psychologists and psychiatrists were interpreting people and their problems based on Freudian, Adlerian and Jungian "theories" which had not been put through any real clinical trials or review.

I started out trying to help people through various fundamentalist Christian "ministries," who all believed that because they had the Bible, they did not need anything else in order to help people change or solve their problems of living. I want to relate two instances from my own personal life where "biblical counseling" had disastrous results.

The first incident took place when I first entered college in the Fall of 1973. I had become something of an agnostic in my last year of High School even though I was raised in a "King James Version" only Baptist Church (a church which taught that only the King James Version of the Bible was "God's Word"; all other translations were deemed as demonic "perversions" of God's "Holy KJV Word"; even in the world of fundamentalism, such a position is generally viewed as a very ignorant one).

I was 19 when I started dating a Baptist preacher's daughter named Ruth. We had met while we both worked in a department store.

Ruth's father had sent her to a very strict independent fundamentalist(and unaccredited) Tennessee Temple College in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Ruth had been "rebellious" against her father's strict rules. She had done things like run off to California with his credit cards and lived on a hippie commune, had lots of lovers, smoked dope and dropped acid. She had ran away from home many times and once ended up in Washington, DC and had been arrested with anti-war protesters. She related that one time she had accompanied her father to a downtown homeless men's mission where he was to preach to the derelicts who were required to hear a sermon before they could get their evening meal. While her father was preaching, Ruth wandered off and ended up having sex with some unknown homeless guy in an alley next to the Union Gospel Mission! She was just in her mid-teens when this happened. I was shocked and disturbed to hear all this. I had never met anyone with problems that she had. Here was this woman who had been raised in a "godly" Christian home going out and doing all kinds of outlandish and immoral things. She fit the proverbial wild preacher's kid gone bad!

But besides living a life of "sin," Ruth had also been suicidal: she had several past attempts. I had never met anyone who was suicidal or even attempted suicide. I was puzzled by it all: here was this beautiful, young 19-year-old woman who was smart, articulate and artistic, but also severely disturbed. I wanted to help but I didn't know what to do.

I grew very concerned for her when she revealed to me that voices would speak to her. She had thought for several years that the voices were her guardian angels, but now she had her doubts. While taking a bible class at the fundamentalist Christian college she started thinking that the voices were perhaps those of "demons" since they always told her to do "sinful" things. Even though I was still an agnostic at the time, I still had a lot of old fundamentalist tapes in my head. I had not developed other ways of understanding why people do what they do.

I asked my sister what I should do to help Ruth and she suggested I talk to Kay Arthur, a young, vibrant woman in Chattanooga who had started a Bible teaching center. Kay was a graduate of Tennessee Temple's Bible School division where she earned a diploma in Christian ministry (Kay now has an internationally known teaching ministry called Precept International.) I called Kay and explained what had been happening and she gave me the number to "Dr. Bob," who had been the head of the psychology department at a local evangelical college and also had his own private Christian counseling practice.

I went and saw Dr. Bob at his office in a high rise office building which housed the offices of other medical and legal professionals. Dr. Bob appeared distinguished, caring and confident about what could be done to help Ruth. He had a Ph.D from a state university in psychology. I explained my concerns over my girlfriend and he listened. He asked me to bring her in for an appointment. The only thing I expected that day was that Dr. Bob was going to "talk" with her about her problems. Isn't that what psychologists do? Ruth and Dr. Bob were in session for about 20 minutes. Then he stepped out from his office to the waiting room where I was sitting and asked me to join them. When I entered, I saw Ruth sitting in a chair and looking like she was in some kind of dazed stupor. He explained to me that she had demonic oppression due to her sinful lifestyle. Satan had gained a foothold in her life because of her sinful ways. He went on to explain how he had diagnosed her problem: he had asked her to read a verse from the Bible but she had refused. He said he then asked what the name of the "demon" was that was speaking to her and she had told him that "it" would not allow her to say it's name, but she could write it out for him. She wrote the name "Mora" on a piece of paper, which Dr. Bob showed to me. She had also refused to confess that "Jesus is Lord," something which he explained demonically oppressed individuals cannot do. He explained that these tests were clear evidence that we were dealing with a case of demonic oppression and just not psychological problems.

Next, the Dr. started commanding the "demon Mora" to leave her. Ruth came out of her fog and covered her ears and started crying. He continued on, and she started screaming as if she was being tortured. She turned to me and said through tearful eyes, "Larry get me out of here!" I refused. Even though the scene was something out of a Grade-B movie, we were staying so Ruthie could get the help she needed! At one point she got up to walk out and Dr. Bob pushed her back into her chair. I became concerned during all the hysterics that she might make a move to jump out of his 9th floor window. The commanding and the crying continued on longer. It seemed like it was all building up to some kind of explosive climax.

Then, all of a sudden, Dr. Bob stopped commanding the demons to leave and matter-of-factly told Ruth that he wanted to make a follow-up appointment with her. Ruth instantly regained her composure and said she needed to use the bathroom and left the room. I turned to Dr. Bob and asked him why he had stopped the exorcism for it looked like something was about to happen. Dr. Bob told me that he had to stop because he had another appointment coming in. He also informed me that Ruth cannot get free of her demons because she "loves her sin too much"; consequently, the demons have a spiritually legal foothold in her life as long as she is unrepentant; thus blocking the power of the Holy Spirit from freeing her. Though I had been a skeptic, suddenly all my years of fundamentalist programming came back to me. What Dr. Bob said made perfect sense. I was a struggling college freshman and he was this highly educated, professional. He had been the Chair of a psychology department at a Christian college. He has this earned doctorate from a "secular" university. He must know what he's doing. I totally accepted this man's interpretation of what I had just witnessed. All my skepticism abut the Bible and faith went out the proverbial window. I reasoned: if "demons" were real and the name of Jesus makes them leave, then Jesus was real and the Bible which tells us about these things is a reliable guide after all! This whole event resulted in me getting "right with the Lord" and putting away all my doubt and unbelief that I had allowed to creep in. I felt excited and wonderful. I didn't have to try to figure everything out on my own any longer. It was true: the Bible was God's word! Now I just needed to diligently study the Bible and the Lord would show me what to do. Truly, "God's Word" is all I needed in order to live my life. I had gone from a deconversion to a conversion experience.

What happened to Ruth? Well, she dropped out of her fundamentalist college and left town. I did talk to her once before she left. I wanted to talk about the attempted exorcism. She didn't want to. When I asked her, "Who is Lord?" I was shocked when she smiled and confidently replied, "Why Larry, Jesus is." I was confused at her ability to now mention the name of the Lord with ease whereas at Dr. Bob's office she seemed unable to.

This event, and the interpretation given to me by Dr. Bob, unfortunately set me up for a true disaster eight years later when I met and married my young "spirit-filled" wife, who turned out to have - you guessed it - demon problems too! I discarded any interest I had in the study of psychology. Now I just needed to know God's Word. With the "whole counsel of God" I would be able to help anyone with any problem because of the sufficiency of scripture. . . or so I thought.

Now, 37 years later, I interpret all that happened differently. Ruth, far from being in some state of demonization, exhibited classic symptoms of psychosis (hearing voices). Her impulsive actions regarding sex and risk taking strike me also as possible she had Bipolar Disorder. Her extreme sexual behaviors I would now want to know if she had ever been sexually molested. In other words, instead of making her behaviors as simply evidence of either godliness or sinfulness, or God or the Devil, what is the bigger picture? Though Dr. Bob had been exposed to regular psychological views about human behavior, he had decided to be strictly "biblical" in his counseling approaches. And since the Bible only mention "demons" as a source for what ails you, then demons it is! His idealogical commitment to the sufficiency of scripture regarding all manner of living blinded him to other possible interpretations of Ruth's dramatic actions. I also see her actions as her playing along with the fundamentalist narrative that she had been raised in. And at the same time, perhaps Ruth was just plan upset with the heavy handed approach Dr. Bob took: you are sinful and you have allowed demons to enter you! Being told that could be upsetting for a vulnerable and troubled 19 year old woman.

Unfortunately, Dr. Bob's "biblical counseling" approach I would retain and use when I encountered another person with problems years later. Sadly, I now know that Ruth did not get the help she so badly needed. Dr. Bob and his biblical approach failed her. It blamed her for her problems. I hope she eventually got the help she really needed. Sorry Ruth. I failed you too.

A year ago, we found the courage to tell our families that after 40 years, we were no longer christians.

Now my spouse lays unresponsive in the hospital with spinal meningitis. We do not know the pathogen. A common bacterium will be readily treatable. An antibiotic resistant super bug could prove fatal. I send a message to let our still very Christian family know that we are in the hospital.

My pastor brother respectfully responds, “Is it all right if we pray for you?”

My loving, supportive sister texts me, “I’m praying for you even though I know you don’t like it.”

I know my brother and sister love us. I know they feel awkward with our deconversion and don’t have the right words to say.

I don’t have the right words to say either.

I wonder how I should answer the question, “Is it all right if we pray for you?”

I want to say. “No, it’s not all right! The god you are praying to is not real. Prayer does not work. I don’t want be forced into implying that prayer is valuable or that it could change things!”

Instead I choose the diplomatic route. “You can pray if you want. We won’t turn away well wishes.”

“Fair enough.” He replies.

The Irrationality of Prayer

But I fume.

If my spouse gets better after a week of constant medical attention, our Christian family will say god answered their prayers and provided healing. I want to point out that such a god could have, but didn’t, prevent the infection in the first place.

If my spouse has an untreatable super-bug and dies of a brain infection, the Christians will say, "God answered with ‘no,’" or "We can’t understand God’s ways," or "God has a greater good in mind.". Other, darker shades of Christian, will say, "It’s not our place to question God," or "It is God’s punishment for your unbelief."

With or without prayer, there are two options. Getting better or not getting better.
So why bother to pray?

The Prayer Meme

I text our friends and word gets out. Everyone we know sends their support and offers to help. The love and concern feel good. The majority of them say something along the lines of, “You are in our thoughts and prayers. Let me know if you need any help.”

I say, “Thank you,” but I want to say, “Don’t pray for us. There is no one listening. It will not change anything.”

What are people trying to express when they say, “I’m praying for you?” Truthfully, I know most of them will not actually pray. In fact, most of the people expressing these sentiments do not even lead religious lives, so what is going on here?

“I’m praying for you” is a social meme that means, “I’m sorry you’re suffering. I hope you recover. I hope you resume your former life. Life is fragile. Death may happen unexpectedly. Bad things cannot always be prevented. I wish I could make it better.”

My mother had me when she was just 16 years old. Her father and my grandfather, a Roman Catholic of strong Italian descent, disapproved of the whole pregnancy. My mother had, after all, sinned to bring on this pregnancy. As a devote Catholic, my grandfather did however support my mother as best as was possible. Maybe he’s one of those rare Catholics that can still put family and loved ones before God.

It was my grandfather’s idea to have me baptized after birth. My mother would be damned to a fiery pit for all eternity, and I was given a clean slate with God. I was officially brought into this world as an already saved child in God’s eyes. Boy, he must have had big plans for me!

A few months after my birth, my father left my mother. It’s hard to blame him too much. They were, after all, just kids at the time. I hardly ever saw him after that though. Even to this day, 22 years later, I can count the times I’ve seen him on my hands.

I think my mother’s pregnancy and the events that followed was what caused her stance on religion – indifference. She didn’t believe in a whole lot, and didn’t mention any of it to me, either. I was my own free agent, able to choose my own path of faith. My grandparents had a different view, however.

My grandfather took me to church whenever I spent weekends or vacation time with him. At first I remember being kind of excited to go. Though looking back, I’m certain that was the case only because I enjoyed spending time with him so much. We could have gone to a bottle recycling plant and I would have been just as happy. He gave me a bible once, too, and told me he wanted me to memorize the Lord’s Prayer so that I could contribute when we went to church. Well, this was my grandfather, the only father figure in my life, and the man I respected most above all. Of course I memorized it! Word for word, and I was extremely proud when I was able to recite it back to him.

My other grandparents were also people of the church, though my experience with them was an entirely different one. My grandfather on that side sexually abused me as a child. For years I really, truly pretended it didn’t happen. I somehow told myself it wasn’t happening, that it never did happen. Then one time, for some reason, it hit me what was going on. The next day when I saw him, I couldn’t look him in the eye In front of my family, the same family that insisted we go to church every Sunday. It was a confusing message to me at the time. Church goers, singing songs of passion and caring and worship, only to be something entirely different, something downright evil, outside of congregation. If they were trying to win me towards the “faith in god” side, they were doing it wrong. This incident isn’t what convinced me that I wasn’t a Christian, but looking back, it sure was un-Christian of them.

I remember in grade six, we were given a small red Bible. Our teacher was an intelligent man, respectable, proper. I’m not sure if he was supposed to, but he told us we didn’t have to take a Bible if we didn’t want one. Like my mother, there was no forced belief, no telling us we needed to be saved; it was up to us to decide if we wanted to read it or not. I took one, of course, being somewhat interested in what it had to say. There was a chance I could find my calling here in this little red book! I felt pretty good about investing some time into something that didn’t involve a television and a joystick. It had an easy schedule to follow inside; every night you would read a small passage. I followed it through mostly, but in the end, I found an easy conclusion to what its pages had hidden; it was just a silly book, filled with cryptic passages and the unbelievable, unrealistic stories of legends and myths. Imagine! A kid in grade six being able to see through the bullshit, but grown adults with three, four, five times the life experience as me still clinging to the Bibles words. At the time, the bible was comparable to any other story I had heard. Like Jack and the Beanstalk, or Santa Clause, I knew it simply couldn’t be true. My first problem with the Bible came with learning about Dinosaurs in class. I had heard tell of God creating the world in 7 days, and only a few thousand years ago. And here was my respected teacher(s) telling me that the Dinosaurs were here two hundred million years ago! That as an unfathomable amount of time before the Bible even came to be! I knew right off the get go that something wasn’t right.

To say I never prayed to God as a youth, though, would be a lie. But, didn’t we all? I was a kid. I’m sure I prayed that I would get a new video game or a snow day at school. And always I promised that it would be the last thing I asked for, since God was a busy fellow and probably didn’t need to hear my pleas every other day. Did God ever answer my prayers? Nahh, of course not. Did I ever feel his presence? Hah! I’ve been a realist since I was just a child, and being a somewhat intelligent kid, I had already decided that this magic stuff was as good as a hoax. And at the same time, what was the sense in praying anyways? I was taught that God already had a plan for us all. Wouldn’t my praying be a waste of time, if a plan is already set in motion?
My grandfather often used to bug my mother about talking to the priest near our home to have me “Confirmed” into the Catholic Church. My mother stuck up for me though, and told my grandfather that if it was something I wanted to do, I would pursue it myself. She was right in defending me. My grandpa never mentioned it again after this, and I of course never pursued Confirmation. I didn’t want to. I knew well enough that I wasn’t a Christian.

Though I knew for a long time that I didn’t believe in the Bible God, it wasn’t until I joined the Canadian Forces in high school that I started calling myself an Atheist. “What’s your religion?” the clerk asked me on my first day. “Uhh, my religion?” I half sputtered back. “Yeah, what do we put on your dog tags?” “Uhh, none, sir.” And that was it. The day I got my dog tags, and they said “NRE” (no religion), I realized what I truly believed in (or at least, I knew what I didn’t believe in, and that’s every man-made god on the planet).

It is my belief that we truly don’t know the answer. Anyone who tells you, Christian or otherwise, that theirs is the truth, is as good as insane for believing such a delusion. Is there a higher power? I don’t know, but I would wager not. But I do know with 100% certainty that if there is, it isn’t Jesus, or Allah, or Zeus, or Thor, or Krishna, or anything that we know of. Right now I believe in the balance of this beautiful organic land we inhabit. While I enjoy living my life free of religious bullshit, it is my hope not that we find out the meaning of life, but that Christians stop worrying so much about life after death, and work towards turning this Earth into heaven for the future generations.

When I de-converted, I was in a relationship with a woman I thought I was going to marry. She was/is a curiously devout liberal protestant. In the months since I "fell away" we broke it off, but stayed friends. It's safe to say that we will not be trying again. This has been one of the most difficult part of leaving the fold, for me at least. At times, it has been crushing. More difficult than dealing with my uber-Catholic mother, who hasn't so much as responded to a text message in the last few weeks.

I'll take some help, if you've got some. Now, it's no secret that apostasy can be one of the most exciting, paradigm-shifting, and important events in a former theist's life. The freedom. The lack of guilt. The knowledge that you are not a wretched sinner. The freedom, again. Naturally, I was excited...but I knew this would not be an easy road. As a former theist, I now also have the problem of not being able to keep my mouth shut when bullshit enters a discussion. This entire website is a testament to that.

Here is my problem. This may sound mushy-gushy and gross, but I'm being honest. If this wasn't a part of your de-conversion experience, count yourself lucky.

I loved this woman. More than I thought I could anyone. She was the one person I swore I would never hurt. I had plans to be her shield and her sword. The good Christian husband, blah blah blah. We were going to raise good Christian children, in a good Christian home, next to some good Christian neighbors. She has been the most important person in my life for the past 5 years, and now she's just gone...partly because of me. Not gone in that we don't speak anymore, but gone in that I drastically changed the nature of the relationship with my atheism, and we had to end it. We still talk once or twice a week, but it's...different. We're forced to dance around issues and subjects that would otherwise result in me telling her I don't believe the claims she is making. Which of course sounds, to her, like I'm calling her a liar.

Here's the question. I'm at an impasse, because as the title suggests, she is the one person whom I cannot bear to hurt, and yet I have done just that...by doing nothing more than being honest with myself. What is the best way to handle this situation? Can a friendship possibly be maintained while so much history is just disregarded? Or do I only have a mere shell of our former relationship to look forward to in the time to come? I know that breaking it off was the right decision, since a marriage with our differing worldviews would likely have ended disastrously. But now, I'm left with this wreckage and a person I still care about more than most. What to do, what to do?

My mother is apparently dying as I write this. She will soon take her last breath. Whilst not wanting to speak ill of the dead I am yet baffled by a life so wasted. I am incensed by a life so injurious to her children.

I found out from my sister that Mom has spoken with a chaplain at the hospital. "She has regrets about her life," my sister states "But she does believe in God." So, apparently, all is forgiven and she can die in peace.

I wonder why Mom didn't try to make amends when she could -- with us real human beings? Instead, last minute and all, she decides that she will talk to a chaplain.

What did he tell her? That god loves all of us and that we are all born sinners. She couldn't help the bad things that she did.

Did he tell her that children should honor their mother and their father? We children just haven't done right by her. We should be punished not her.

I wonder if he told her that she should forgive us all our trespasses. Even if at least some of her children blatantly refuse to forgive her for her trespasses. After all, Christians should be able to forgive anything on the planet. God forgives even the most horrible of people. The only thing he won't forgive is those who simply cannot or will not believe in Him.

Perhaps this is one of the worst beliefs created by Christianity. That you can throw your children to the dogs, marry nine times, drink like a fish, have character flaws that are downright evil but... not to worry. God will sweep you into His great big arms and you will be dancing on streets of gold in the afterlife. To hell with all the lives left in tatters around you in the real world.

My sister said today that she realizes that Mom has done a lot of wrong but she wants to love her parent. I am fine with that. I wanted to love my parent as well. I have mourned the fact that I didn't have a parent who cared for anything more than her own twisted wellbeing. A parent who, for whatever reasons, was so warped that she could not be more than a sad caricature of humanity. I have resolved my issues. Like loving God, I would be loving what I wanted to believe in, the image I have of what a mother should be. An ethereal but imaginary being. I cannot love what my mother actually is.

I am simply left puzzled by a life so wasted and six children torn to shreds. And, a God that can forgive someone at the last minute. According to most Christians, my mother [who was a bad person] will be in Heaven. And I [a good person] will be in Hell. That is a God that makes no sense whatsoever.

DUENEWEG, Mo. — The minister at first denied downloading any child pornography to the federal agent and police officer who showed up two weeks ago at the door of his home in Duenweg.
But Michael A. Crippen, pastor of the First Baptist Church in Duenweg, soon broke down and admitted to investigators that he had secretly viewed images of adult and child pornography via the Internet for years, according to allegations contained in an affidavit filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Springfield.

He allegedly told investigators that he had become addicted to pornography, and that he deleted a number of such images from one of his computers earlier that day and prayed for help with his problem. The affidavit states that he told investigators he normally viewed such pornography in the morning before going to work at his church.

Crippen, 51, appeared Tuesday in federal court on a complaint of possessing child pornography. He remains in custody pending a detention hearing scheduled for Friday.

The minister’s arrest has stunned members of his congregation.

“We’re just nonplused,” said Bob McKinzie, a former minister and current member of the church. “It came as a shock to us and a real surprise.”

Despite his alleged admissions to the two investigators on Oct. 13, Crippen was not arrested until Monday after forensic examinations of laptop and desktop computers that were removed from his home on that date. The affidavit states that the minister signed a consent form allowing the special agent from Immigration and Customs Enforcement and a Joplin police officer to seize the two computers and examine their hard drives.

McKinzie said he plans to deliver this Sunday’s sermon in the minister’s absence.

U.S. Attorney Beth Phillips says Europol provided information to federal agents in the United States, who identified Crippen's computer as one that downloaded child pornography in August 2009.

Phillips says the government has filed a motion that Crippen be held without bond until his trial. The motion states that Crippen is a danger to the community because he holds a position of trust that provides access to minor children and his residence is located adjacent to an elementary school.

The motion also states that Crippen is a flight risk because he has applied for employment as a pastor in another community and had a job interview scheduled for today.

An Ontario priest has been arrested on suspicion of sexually abusing a 12-year-old boy, police said Tuesday.

Jose Alejandro Castillo, 57, pastor of Our Lady of Guadalupe Church in Ontario and known as "Father Alex" to parishioners, was arrested Monday at 3:30 p.m. at his Ontario home.

After a three-month investigation, Ontario police say they confirmed inappropriate sexual contact by Castillo, with eight separate acts committed against the boy over a three-month period in 2008, said Sgt. David McBride.

The San Bernardino County district attorney’s office issued an arrest warrant charging Castillo with eight counts of lewd or lascivious acts with a child younger than 14.

Castillo was removed from active ministry in June after he was accused, by relatives of the victims, of molesting two adolescent boys. The Diocese of San Bernardino took it to police, and the allegations were made public nearly three months later in a letter read at weekend Mass at the four churches where he had served.

"This is obviously a very sad day for our diocese and especially for the good people of our Lady of Guadalupe parish," said Diocese of San Bernardino spokesman John Andrews. "We take a moment to express our sorrow and our regret to all victims of abuse in our church and in our society; this issue is a very terrible thing."

Police determined there were three other victims -- a 16-year-old boy at Our Lady of Guadalupe and two adults at other parishes -- but declined to file charges because the statute of limitations for the crimes had expired.

Detectives also are investigating another alleged incident between Castillo and a 14-year-old boy while the priest was serving at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church.

Castillo is being held on $1-million bail and could face up to 22 years in prison if convicted, police said.

A member of the diocese since 1988, Castillo has worked at Our Lady of Guadalupe since 2003 and was named pastor in 2006.

He also has worked at St. Anthony in San Bernardino (1988-1989), St. Catherine of Siena in Rialto (2000-2003) and St. George in Ontario (2006-2008).

Before that, he worked for several years at the California Catholic Conference, which represents the state’s Catholics on legislative and social issues.

Investigators suspect there may be other victims and urge anyone with more information to contact Ontario Police Det. Mark Guski at (909) 395-2726.

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Recently I heard a couple from my former church were getting divorced. I was quite surprised, since they were considered very spiritual. The wife was in charge of Women’s Ministries when I was at the church. I heard they had left that church and joined another one. I certainly don’t know the reasons that might have led to their separation. But the wife made a comment a while back that might be a clue.

We all know that “keeping oneself pure until marriage” is the mantra of the xtian church. It’s supposed to prevent all those problems that those in “secular” marriages have that lead to divorce. The wife told us at one time that she and her then boyfriend had had sex before marriage. She was very bitter and angry, still, after 15 or more years of marriage. They hadn’t waited until their wedding night. She then made the comment that no one seems to understand how upsetting this is for her, and how it still affects her. I remember looking at the other women present, and was wondering if anyone was going to say, “So what?” Really, is it worth all the pain and agony she lived with her entire married life? I certainly wasn’t going to say anything because I didn’t think it was such a big deal. Perhaps the other women present felt the same way, because no one said anything.

Like I said, I don’t know what problems they had that brought them to a separation. But it got me thinking about the “True Love Waits” campaign that is always going on in the church. Virginity, especially for women, is held up as some kind of holy, lofty condition.

Let’s say a couple are both virgins, involved in religion, and decide to have sex before marriage, then when one of them feels dirty and contaminated, they decide the only thing to do that will purify themselves, is marriage. Well, maybe they were too young, maybe they weren’t good for each other and would have broken it off. But now they feel this pressure by god, religion, pastors to fix this. So they get married, and it’s a bad mix. Of course, they stay together for the next 20 years because it’s the best thing to do, and god will help them with their problems. That just doesn’t work. The problems were there from the start.

It seems that again, virginity is something that is expected from young women. Historically it seems that men could do whatever they wanted with whomever, but their future wives had to be virgins. Clean, pure, just like Jesus. It’s another burden that has to be born by women.

I was just wondering how much this true love waits thing has contributed to the divorce rate in the church. It came to mind as I was told about this couple’s divorce and the comment she had made years before. Just reminds me of the impossible standards the church has for everyone.

Now that prayer failed, and the Crystal Cathedral is in bankruptcy, the higher-ups are scrambling to keep that monument to deception going. These people have whined to the press for a while now about how

"Tough times never last; every storm comes to an end. Right now, people need to hear that message more than ever." ~~~Sheila Schuller Coleman ( dtr. of Robert Schuller )

(Tough times never last? Tell that to the countries where, since time began, have struggled to achieve even a level of sub-poverty )

What sticks in my craw (Grandpa's phrase) is how they had put the paying of ills to the vendors on the back burner... meanwhile the cogs of the Chrystal machine just kept turning, keeping the status quo, for the most part.

....Hmmm.... Was it the lawsuits against them that lit a fire under that "walk?"

Abraham Lincoln, well known non-member of any church, was left high and dry by William F. Berry, his former partner in a store they co-owned in 1832 in New Salem, Ill. Berry loved his whiskey, and after signing his name (and Lincoln's) to a tavern license, they were able to sell liquor. Lincoln did not drink. Berry was his own best customer, and nine months later Abe sold his interest in the store to Berry.

When Berry died in 1835, he left considerable debt, and because Abe and Berry were partners, Abe became responsible for Berry's debts as well. $1,100 was a large sum in 1835, equivalent to $25,000. in today's dollars.

It was very common in the early 1800's for debtors to skip out on their debts, escaping their creditors in the middle of the night. But Lincoln stayed, telling every single creditor that they would be paid, and with interest.

This man stayed who had read Thomas Paine's "The Age of Reason," who was looked down upon by the Religious in Springfield...refusing to vote for him, because he was thought to be a heathen. He eventually paid back every penny, thus earning him the nickname "Honest Abe".

I would say that Abe walked that walk, never preaching to anyone on how they should live....but instead served us with an example of how HE lived.

I wrote a short description of how I was feeling at the start of my deconversion. One thing I know is that mentally, I am pretty far gone from Christianity--even the fear of hell is SLOWLY dissolving. What I think I'm dealing with now is a lot of ANGER, mixed with confusion. I know that I am in a rush to be completely free of this but I can't rush myself. I just recognized that there was a BIG problem in my belief system and I'm determined to start listening to myself for a change.

I just keep thinking of all my experiences as a Christian. And most if not all of them were laced with the emotion of guilt. Even from a young age. During communion we always had to pray first and examine ourselves and me being a perfectionist was always, always so deadly afraid of something being wrong inside me. Something I didn't confess or really didn't believe-this is at around nine years old. I shouldn't have felt guilty about anything at nine but there I was thinking, scrutinizing myself for some hidden sin at nine. Fearful that if I didn't get myself in just right order I'll eat a communion wafer and die.

What kind of love is that? Why did it feel like everything that went wrong was my fault? I always had serious issues with guilt and fear, I re-dedicated my life back to Christ after coming out of my first serious and mentally controlling relationship just to jump into another one. I was told that I was sexually tainted--how does that help my self esteem? Obviously it's not my self esteem that matters since I'm considered a selfish sinning worm in the world of Christianity.

Back in church, I was trying to get myself back in shape for Jesus and I decide to go to Christian counseling. I'm dating a childhood sweetheart thinking things will be different this time since he's a believer, and for some reason I started having weird intrusive thoughts about being with his brother sexually. Not knowing anything about intrusive thoughts at the time and that everyone gets them--I go to counseling to get over the "sin" I committed with my previous boyfriend and trying to do battle with the devil for my mind. The counselor half of the time doesn't even remember the stuff I tell her from the previous sessions. I tell her that I'm struggling with sexual thoughts about my current boyfriend's brother (who I don't want), and along with that a side order of masturbation. I'm told that I have a lust problem (add on some more guilt) and to read some verses on that. How the hell am I going to get rid of my guilt when you're just adding the weights on? How the hell is everything my fault?

A year of counseling, mental oppression and sadly more oppression from my current boyfriend and still no help. But I mustn't stop trying. Thankfully, me and Christian bf number one break up, but hey.. now it's time for me to just have one on one time with God. Why when it seemed like nothing, absolutely nothing was going on in my life that God didn't decide to give me at least one word of encouragement? "I see what you're going through Patrice. It's a lot. I'm here for you. I will help you...I love you." I never experienced any of the love that Christians are so ecstatic about.

I never had a slain-in-the-spirit moment. I'd always think when that would happen, "Well what's wrong with me?" "How come I never feel those things?" I never felt them. Only things I felt was uncertainty, fear and guilt-guilt about not doing all I can, guilt for not fitting in with lots of the other women in my church, guilt for not being able to tame my natural urges, guilt, guilt, GODDAMN guilt! I used to stick notes on my wall encouraging myself not to do you know what at night. I was always the one at fault...always. And not to mention when I did have a boyfriend and you all know how hard it is to not do the "do", and when that happens--the woman is the one to be in charge of keeping the relationship pure. Well, if women are the ones in charge of that, why are the men in charge of just about everything else (nothing against men)? Why put me in charge of something that is obviously too hard for me to uphold,especially since I'm the WEAKER vessel.

Periods of church go by...no revelations, no inspiration. Just dry..church. My family isn't even attending anymore at this time, my father is struggling with an on again, off again drug addiction. My mother told me they went to the church for help with marital problems and they were helping but as soon as the offerings got low on my family's end they turned them away. I'm so sorry it took me this long to see how cold church clergy can be. At that time, I just couldn't believe it--I was too far in. Me, trying my darnedest to be the best Christian ever so that I can just enjoy life (Is that too much to ask of god?) decide that God is calling me to another church. I leave the baptist church of my youth and start attending a calvary chapel church. Everyone seemed so laid back and not legalistic, which I thought my former church was suffering from. I heard a sermon on spiritual warfare and desperately needing some help for the guilty voices that was plaguing my mind decide yes, this is the church for me. I feel at peace for a while, wait a couple of months to make my decision and then I make this church my new church home. Someone is already badgering me about joining a ministry, I haven't even gotten settled in yet. I never did well with the ministry aspect of church in any church. I always chalked it up to me having a rebellious spirit.

Only things I felt was uncertainty, fear and guilt-guilt about not doing all I can, guilt for not fitting in with lots of the other women in my church, guilt for not being able to tame my natural urges, guilt, guilt, GODDAMN guilt! I'm an artist, I love comics and action movies with blood and gore, I love the mars Volta, Nirvana, Rradiohead and all the other things that a church would deem carnal. I never felt lead to get into any ministry and whenever I did it was always forced.I just barely fit in anywhere...when it came to church. I start to feel safe enough to request Christian counseling again..bad idea. The assistant pastor, not even knowing my background--throws me into one on one counseling with this woman that's like three generations away from me age wise and I had a feeling in my gut that this was a bad idea. But did I listen to myself? Sadly, no. I felt like I should let The Spirit lead me. This was not a good experience. The lady lives alone--and I really don't think it's by choice. Have you ever heard of the gift of singleness? Is that something that was spoken of in your church? I've heard it, but I never met anyone that had it. I don't think this lady had it. At first she seems nice and sincere. I start to have hope that my mental and emotional anguish may come to and end. But all I got again was more guilt. "Patrice, I wasn't going to say anything about it but I really think you should mind your dress." "What?" She didn't approve of my shorts, I never had problems with how I dressed, neither did my mother or my father..the only problems I had with my dress were the problems that women in church told me to have.

That one session left me confused and just gave me something else to feel BAD about. I go to another session, "Well I used to have really bad headaches (guilty feelings) because I like to drink wine and enjoy a glass of beer. I don't know how to feel about this because I don't know if it's okay--I mean, it's not a sin to drink right? The pastor even said it's a part of our Christian liberties." "Well", she glares, "why do you need to drink?" "Well I don't see how that should be a question if you can do it." She then goes into this whole bizarre contorted explanation of how you will never hear the pastor endorse drinking (Is he god?) but I had clearly heard him say that it was a liberty (He still isn't god). Then this lady from the same congregation is confusing the hell out of me. She then explains how she likes white zinnfandel, so I say SO DRINK IT. She then goes into but I'm in leadership and I can't set a bad example, so setting a bad example I guess is being yourself. You can't be yourself if you're going to be an example to anyone. She then talks about how she was at a restaurant and ordered one and tried to put it into a regular glass so that it wouldn't look like a drink (it's still a drink). Then she said, "Well what if the waiter was Muslim, how could I witness to him? Or what if someone from the church walked by and saw her, what would they think?"

Your life, in that system is truly not your own. I'm slowly starting to dislike coming to counseling. The last straw came when I was talking to her about music. I LOVE music--and I used to feel so guilty going into tower records and never thinking about getting a gospel record. I remember buying one just to appease the guilt. I almost returned a Radiohead CD out of guilt. I never liked gospel. I never will. I explained to my counselor that I was confused about what I could and couldn't listen to. My best friend, who's still a Christian would tell me, "God will slowly take those desires away from you". He never did. And why should I want those desires to go away? Those things...are me. I told her how I liked The Mars Volta and for anyone who's a Mars Volta fan that may read this, you guys know how they feel about religion. I was even honest enough to tell her about them and their beliefs. I told her that they were my favorite band in the whole world. She said, it sounds like you're listening to something that god doesn't approve of. She told me how she has all these jazz CDs that she is trying to give away because they take her mentally and emotionally to bad places.

Being a Christian is just mentally tormenting and emotionally stifling. By the time she was done with me and that session, I was in tears and she just couldn't understand it. I never went to her again.

Those are some of the things that were floating around in my mind today. Most days are pretty good..some days are really confusing and I find myself trapped in my head questioning, is my deconversion my fault? Is there something I missed? I can't go back to that...it would be intellectual suicide and worse, I would be giving up on me. I'm not trying to put a time frame on when I can burst out with my FREE AT LAST moment, but I'm sure this is a normal phase.

My biggest problem with religion is the answers I get (time and time again) to this question:

If God is a loving God, why did he allow me to go through what I went through?

I've heard it all: from “We can not know why God allows some things to happen to people” (Okay, then he obviously doesn't care if he's allowing people he created to suffer) to “Well maybe you did something in your past that God saw fit to correct and this was how he chose to punish/teach you”. Yeah, thanks for that one.

Another of my biggest problems is the hypocrisy you see throughout the church (any church, pick one). I've had people say, “Now wait a minute, you can't judge god based on what people do!” Sure I can. You claim he changed your life and because of that you're a different person now. Uh huh. And your proof of this is where? Obviously NOT in the lives of those who claim the same belief.

My path to Atheism is a long and drawn out one. Honestly I think it started around the age of nine, when I had questions about god that I wasn't allowed to ask, hell there are some things I wasn't even allowed to journal about. (I have since broken the silence on those things).

I used to believe that it was god who brought me through my struggles. I would ignore the pestering questions or hypocrisy I saw in all of that, trusting that “Only god knows what is best”. I asked Pastors, Preachers (apparently there's a difference, though I'm still not sure what exactly it is) Sunday School teachers, friends, relatives, everyone I could get to sit down and give me the time of day; random questions about faith and god and their beliefs. I got sick of asking people questions and decided to go straight to the source. I read the bible (several times over), memorized scripture, asked god, etc.

After 10 years of never getting answers (or at least not ones seeped in circular logic) I gave up and decided to just do the best I could. I kept attending church because honestly, I thought it would kill my mother to hear I wasn't so sure god existed any longer, and because church is where my friends were. I was raised in the church, I knew everyone there, they knew me. They had supported me through thick and thin, helped me out here and there, watched me as a kid or watched MY kids. It was “home” in a way. Even though I no longer agreed with what was being preached, I felt obligated to attend. I feared that if I stopped, I would lose my friends.

Then I moved to South Carolina and my home church was too far away for me to be involved any longer. Most of my friends moved on, stopped calling, or just fell away. I blamed the move. I looked for a new church and found problems with every single one I attended. I found one I really liked, joined and then watched in horror as it fell apart (the pastor ran off with the secretary and $10,000 in offering money). I stopped attending, figured I could find god on my own time. Not to mention I was really sick of all the hypocrisy and hate that stems from people who think they're greater than others (okay, forgiven, whatever. Same hat in my opinion)

I started reading other books than just the bible, looking for something, anything to fill the gap that church had put in my heart. There is a saying that goes “there is a god shaped whole in every heart that only god can heal” More to the point, there is a deep need for fellowship and friendship that (in the south anyway) church is the easiest way to fill that void. There is a thirst for people who are struggling just like you are, who you can open up to and lean on in times of trouble as well as times of joy. The problem is, you don't need god for any of that. At least I no longer need it. I don't need an excuse to get together with like minded people and talk about life. I don't need an excuse to open my wallet and help my peers or my community. I don't need to fill the void of “I don't know” with “Because that's the way god made it”.

I walked away from church a few years back, I tried desperately to hold onto my views of religion and heaven and hell. Eventually I gave up. I got so sick and tired of trying to be my best and never being good enough, of going through the motions and not feeling any different.

When I finally “came out of the religious closet” so to speak, I felt free. FINALLY FREE! It's ironic. All I hear about is how you can be free in christ. I'd never felt so trapped before in my life. Now that I'm free of all of that, I can live life the way I want. And guess what: it feels AMAZING to be a good person, just because I want to be, not because “it's the christian thing to do”. It feels even better to breathe without risking offending some all powerful being.

Some people who read this will say I was never a “true christian”. I debunk this beliefs with your own book: Romans 10:9-11 states “That if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved. As the Scripture says, "Anyone who trusts in him will never be put to shame."

Well at the time (age 7 – 22) I did believe it, with every ounce of my being and every beat of my heart. The point is that I don't any more. And if you honestly think I can lose my salvation, you should really read that book of yours again.

Some people will say I'm mad at god and this is just a stage. I'm not mad at him any more, honestly I used to be, but I find it pretty hard to be mad at what doesn't exist. Not impossible, but not really worth my time or energy either. No, I'm not mad at any god. I am however constantly annoyed at people who use religion as an excuse. Some use it to excuse hate, others use it to excuse laziness. Whatever the reason, I can not help but roll my eyes in exasperation and it takes more strength and will power than I ever imagined it would, to keep my mouth shut and NOT prove you wrong and debate the topic every single time it comes up.

Anyway, this is just a part of my path from religious to atheist. I'm still learning, still working on who I am and still attempting to figure out where to go from here. Feel free to pray for me, but please don't expect it to change anything. I've made up my mind and I won't be going back to faith and fairy tales. I much prefer fact to fiction.

Recently I attended a wedding in a Lutheran Church to see my beautiful daughter-in-law and adorable grandson stand-up as the matron of honor and the ring-bearer.

We had our own little cheering section in the back of the church which included family. His 2-year-old cousin Madalyn -- spelled like Madalyn Murray O'Hair -- had taken the pencil from the pew and started randomly crossing out sections of the Bible. I told her, "That's OK honey. There's a lot of really mean bad stuff in that book. Cross out whatever you like." There was an eruption of laughter from all.

Which leads to my question:

If you could strike out or edit any part of the "GOOD BOOK" as being the most harmful to Christians, to you or the world at large- people dealing with Christians what would it be?

I have to start with a question that may sound rude. Most people would expect that someone writing about human sacrifice and polytheism in the Bible would be an atheist or agnostic. And yet you describe yourself as a very committed Christian. Help me put the pieces together.

Well I hail from the Stone-Campbell tradition, an anti-creedal protestant movement that is committed to discovering what the Bible says, even if what the Bible says contradicts what orthodox Christianity has historically said. That commitment to the Bible over the creeds is what underwrote my biblical studies, and ironically is what made it possible for me to come to the realization that the Bible isn’t inerrant, and that what “it says” often depends on which book in the Bible you’re reading.

At this point, many Christians would abandon their faith, because their faith is in the creeds, and in an idea of an inerrant Bible. For me on the other hand, taking the Bible seriously meant taking all of the conflicting voices within the Bible seriously, and I was able to see the value in that. What informs my faith is not so much what the Bible “says” as it is what the Bible displays, the processes that unfold in its pages, the struggle to find meaning that it represents. It’s precisely in the humanity of the Bible that we can gain real insight into the divine. What’s revelatory is not always the words themselves, but the spaces between them.

So, based on your studies, what is the story that the Bible tells?

The Bible is sort of like a choose-your-own-adventure book, except none of the alternative storylines ever gets resolved. That’s just the thing. The Bible doesn’t really tell one story. And by that I don’t just mean that the Bible is a collection of different stories. I mean that the Bible consists of a spectrum of competing stories. The Bible is sort of like a choose-your-own-adventure book, except none of the alternative storylines ever gets resolved. They’re all particular stories, about a people called Israel, their god Yahweh, and the relationship of Israel and Yahweh to the rest of the world. They all try to explain why Israel is suffering, why the world is broken, and how through the reversal of Israel’s fortunes the world is going to be mended, but they posit different answers to those questions.

There are several different authors trying to make sense of the same basic material, but each of them arranges it in different ways, and none of them do it just right. The royal historians declared that the Davidic dynasty would last forever, but it didn’t. The prophets predicted the restoration of Israel’s national sovereignty, but Israel wasn’t restored. Jesus predicted the end of the world as we know it, but the world as we know it didn’t end.

If the Bible does tell a single story, it’s a story that transcends each of the stories its many authors intended to tell. It tells the story of a nation trying to contend for its survival in a hostile world and trying to explain the fact of suffering with reference to the only thing they thought could explain it: the will of Yahweh.

Who is the Yahweh of the Israelites?

Well as scholars like Frank Cross, Chris Rollston, Mark Smith and others have demonstrated and have known for some time, the earliest texts in the Hebrew Bible give a strong indication that the early conception of Yahweh was that he was an ancient Near Eastern tribal deity. As I argue in my book, following Rollston, the Song of Moses in Deut 32 indicates that Yahweh was believed to have been one of the children of the Canaanite deity El Elyon (God Most High). The song describes how the nations were originally formed, and what it says is that the peoples of the earth were divided up according to the number of El Elyon’s children (the junior members of the divine pantheon). Yahweh, Israel’s patron deity, was one of Elyon’s children.

The best evidence suggests that Yahweh did not begin as the “only true God” of later Jewish monotheism; he did not begin as the creator of the world. Yahweh began as a young, up-and-coming tribal deity whose prowess among other gods mirrored Israel’s aspirations vis-a-vis surrounding tribes and nations.

You’re saying God evolves in the Old Testament?

Exactly. Surprise of surprises, as Israel aspired to greatness and sought to make a name for itself, surrounded by vast empires, Yahweh got bigger and bigger, until he became so grandiose in their theologies that it no longer made sense to refer to the other national deities as gods at all—so vastly superior was Yahweh to the gods of other nations, according to Judean propaganda literature.

Tell us more about this evolution from tribal deity to monotheism.

Well as Chris Rollston argues, there are various stages in Israel’s progression from polytheism to monotheism. Yahweh begins as a junior member of the divine pantheon. This is the view during the tribal confederation period of Israel’s history. After Israel became a monarchy, Yahweh gets a promotion to head of the pantheon, taking his father Elyon’s place. (This parallels similar ideas in Babylonian literature, in which Marduk’s ascendancy to king of the gods mirrors the rise of the Babylonian empire.)

Over time, Yahweh and Elyon are conflated, they sort of merge into one god. At this stage Yahweh starts to be seen as creator-god. But in this period, Israel still believes in other gods; it’s just that they’re not supposed to worship other gods because they owed their allegiance to Yahweh, their patron deity. Of course, Yahweh was believed to have had a wife, Asherah, and it is clear that Israelites worshiped her as Yahweh’s consort.

This seems to have been acceptable orthodoxy until the seventh century BCE or so. At that point, prophets like Jeremiah began to polemicize other gods, calling into doubt their very existence. This idea that Yahweh alone is God is solidified during the Babylonian exile in the sixth century, for a complex set of reasons. This is when official Israelite religion finally became monotheistic.

Well the evidence is complex, and I lay much of it out in my book. But the short version is that human sacrifice was a rare but widespread practice in ancient Near Eastern religion, and there is evidence that until about the seventh and sixth centuries BCE, it was an acceptable part of Israelite and Judean religion as well. There’s the story of the near-sacrifice of Isaac by his father Abraham. It is popularly believed that because an angel prevented Abraham from killing his son at the last moment, the story constitutes a condemnation of child sacrifice. But that’s not the case. Isaac is spared not because human sacrifice is seen to be immoral, but because Isaac was the child of promise and needed to survive. In reality, the account depends upon the logic of human sacrifice, because Abraham is praised for his willingness to kill his own son to appease Yahweh.

There is evidence that ancient Israelites believed that human sacrifices could be offered to Yahweh in exchange for victory in battle against their enemies. The Israelite warrior Jephthah sacrificed his virgin daughter to Yahweh in fulfillment of a vow he made in order to secure Yahweh’s help in battle. The same ideology can be seen in some early accounts of the Canaanite conquest, in which Yahweh gives Israelites victory against Canaanite armies, and the Israelites in turn slaughter all of the women and children in payment to Yahweh for his aid.

There’s also evidence that Yahweh commanded human sacrifice in the law of Moses. Later, when the practice of human sacrifice fell into disrepute among elite circles, the prophet Ezekiel confirms that Yahweh commanded human sacrifice, but interprets that command as a form of punishment for Israel’s disobedience. Ezekiel needed a way to deal with that tradition found in Exodus 22, and did so by claiming that Yahweh ordered them to kill their firstborn sons as a way of getting back at them for their lack of faith in him. Obviously Ezekiel’s solution to the problem was problematic in itself, but at least we can thank him for helping to put an end to the institution of child sacrifice in Israelite religion.

I’ve heard evangelicals explain that the reason God prescribed scorched earth policies in the Old Testament was because the surrounding nations were so evil –that they practiced child sacrifice. (God sent warnings; they didn’t heed them.) Is this just a desperate attempt to justify the unconscionable?

Yeah, well that justification is in the Bible itself, in texts that were written or edited after the institution of child sacrifice fell into disrepute. But the reality is that Israelites practiced child sacrifice too. As I argue in chapter 6 of my book, the real motivations for the conquests were much more nefarious. It had more to do with land and the consolidation of political power than anything else.

Wouldn’t most Christians and Jews find this shocking?

Of course, and rightly so. It is shocking. I was shocked. But what I find even more shocking is the fact that some believers go to such great lengths to try to defend these genocides and moral atrocities. The same people who preach against the evils of abortion in the name of absolute, objective morality throw their absolute, objective morality out the window in order to defend the child-murders of an ancient tribe who thought they were doing the will of God. That’s what’s most shocking to me.

I was raised that the Bible was the literally perfect, "inerrant" word of God. What you are saying sure calls into question this point of view.

I was raised to view the Bible in the same way, and it was my faith in the Bible that led me to study it. My confidence in its veracity is what led me to study it critically, assuming it would stand up to the test. Eventually I had to be honest about the facts and acknowledge that it couldn’t stand up.

You’ve been accused of sleeping with the enemy, so to speak. Aren’t you just giving ammunition to the enemies of faith?

The truth is the truth. I can’t change what the truth is. If some groups want to use the truth as ammunition against other groups, that’s their prerogative. I think that the truth should be used as ammunition against fundamentalist varieties of Christianity and Zionist Judaism, because such strands of the faith wreak so much havoc on the world. If they can use lead bullets to defend their ideologies, I think that justifies using truth-bullets to put as many holes as possible in their propaganda.

If believers can be blind to something as concrete as polytheism or human sacrifice in the Bible, what other cultural fragments may be there – with God’s name on them?

Well, there’s no escaping culture—whether it’s the ancient culture of Palestinian Judaism or modern cultures. All of our knowledge will always be shaped by cultural factors. Many Christians will be surprised to learn that much of Jesus’ teaching is derived from a standard script that scholars call “Jewish apocalyptic” (I talk about this in chapter 8 of my book). Jesus’ thinking was just as culturally conditioned as every other perspective in and outside the Bible. But that doesn’t mean it’s useless or irrelevant as a result. We need to appropriate his insights critically, but once we do, I think we’ll find a wealth of resources in there that transcend the limits of Jewish apocalyptic.

Is this, as Sam Harris called it, “The End of Faith?”

One thing that the New Atheists and fundamentalist Christians share is this either/or logic. Either Christianity is true, or it isn’t. And if it isn’t, then it’s useless. I don’t buy it into that simplistic paradigm.

When we’re talking about an ultimate truth that may or may not lie beyond the metaphysical iron curtain, we’re talking about a “truth” that is very different from the kind of truths that can be verified or falsified by scientific procedures. Talk about this ultimate truth, or “God-talk” as theologians call it, is always going to be conditioned by the limits of human knowledge on this side of the curtain. As Wittgenstein put it, the limits of language are coterminous with the limits of the world. But if there is anything meaningful about our existence, it lies beyond those limits, and speaking truthfully about what lies beyond the limits of language cannot by definition entail speaking about what we can demonstrate to be true empirically.

Truthful God-talk is poetry, not science—evocative, not descriptive. “Faith” is what we have when we live our lives as if they were meaningful, and Christianity offers us one language that helps us do that. Like any language, of course, there are different dialects, accents, and vocabularies. Just as with English speakers, some Christians get irony, metaphor, and humor, and others don’t. Moreover, just as languages evolve to adapt to new realities and new knowledge, religions do the same, and rightly so, whether practitioners acknowledge it or not.

How should Christians read the Bible in light of this kind of scholarship?

Between the lines. That’s how they should read the Bible. Christians need to learn to appropriate our tradition’s God-talk both critically and constructively. As I argue in chapter 1 of my book, the Bible is an argument with itself. It doesn’t have one viewpoint, but in the Bible you’ll find actual disputes between different personalities about the meaning of it all.

To be a Jew or Christian, to be a part of that tradition, is to participate in the argument. It’s to join in. You can take up a position represented by Jesus, or by the Teacher in Ecclesiastes—which is sharply at odds with the two other major schools of thought in the Bible. (I’ve often said that if Ecclesiastes wasn’t in the Bible, I wouldn’t be able to call myself a Christian on most days.) Or you can come up with a new position. But to be a member of the faith community is to participate in the discussion.

I am a Christian because I believe that what our predecessors have said continues to be important to the discussion, even if what they said is sometimes dead wrong. Christians need to understand that it’s OK to disagree with the Bible; but, in doing so, it’s not OK to pretend like we’re not indebted to our predecessors, even when we disagree with them.

Fred Plumer at the Center for Progressive Christianity says, “most of the creedal things we have been preaching and teaching in our churches have not had solid scholarly support for over fifty years (actually 100 years but [this knowledge] only got into the seminaries in the last 50). And we in the Church have not done the work required nor have we had the courage to share what so many of us have known.” It sounds like you agree; is this changing—is it a generational thing?

Well, I hope it’s changing. It may be a generational thing. But I’m a realist. As much as I would like to see the end of fundamentalism, I am dubious that we ever will. I suspect there will always be fundamentalists and revivals of fundamentalism. Fundamentalism is very attractive because it’s easy. It provides pat answers, and it’s much easier to navigate life with answers, even bad ones, than to try to wade through all of this ambiguity. For that reason, I am a bit pessimistic about our prospects.

Of course, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t strive to struggle against such simplistic ideologies and the dangers they represent. But we don’t engage in the struggle because we’re necessarily going to win. We do it because it’s right.

During his Stripped tour, Izzard said he realized he was an atheist. "I was warming the material up in New York, where one night, literally on stage, I realised I didn’t believe in God at all...I just didn’t think there was anyone upstairs."[*]

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